Bloomberg UK pay is picking up after employment among citizens of the eastern countries that joined the European Union more than a decade ago fell for the first time since 2009. Average weekly earnings excluding bonuses rose 2.5 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, the most since December 2016, the Office for National Statistics said. The overall ...

Bloomberg The era of anemic productivity growth may be coming to an end in the US and Europe. So says the research arm of consultation company McKinsey & Co. in a new 147-page report. It argues that productivity could expand at a 2 percent-plus annual clip over the coming decade versus the roughly 0.5 percent pace in recent years. “We ...

Bloomberg UK PM Theresa May is asking the European Union for flexibility on the length of the Brexit transition period with just over a year before the country leaves the bloc. The UK has said it wants an implementation period to last around two years, while the European Union has stipulated an end date of December 31, 2020. But the ...

Bloomberg American business confidence in the world economy has surged, adding to an uptick in overall optimism as US tax cuts and looser regulation improve the outlook for domestic growth, according to a new study. Some 69 percent of leaders from mid-size companies across the US said they were optimistic about the global economy this year, more than double the ...

Bloomberg Vancouver, one of the hottest housing markets in North America, is getting a little tougher for wealthy Chinese buyers. British Columbia Finance Minister Carole James announced measures targeting foreign buyers and speculators in the first budget since her government was elected on a pledge to make housing more affordable for residents of Canada’s Pacific Coast province. Starting from February ...

Bloomberg Pro-government forces pounded the rebel-held district of eastern Ghouta outside the Syrian capital Damascus, in a surge of violence that a war monitor said had killed at least 250 people since Sunday night. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was the highest 48-hour death toll in the Syria conflict since a 2013 chemical attack on eastern ...

Bloomberg US Vice President Mike Pence was willing to meet with Kim Jong Un’s envoys earlier this month during the Winter Olympics in South Korea, but the North Koreans backed out, the Trump administration said. “North Korea dangled a meeting in hopes of the vice president softening his message, which would have ceded the world stage for their propaganda during ...

Bloomberg Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called President Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem a “dangerous” development in a speech before the United Nations, then walked out before US envoy Nikki Haley retorted that “we will not chase after you.” The encounter before the Security Council reflected the tensions in US-Palestinian relations since Trump’s declaration ...

Bloomberg Venezuela’s main opposition parties say they will shun this year’s presidential elections, claiming the vote has been rigged to guarantee a victory for President Nicolas Maduro. Justice First, the country’s largest opposition party, announced that it would not be participating in April 22 elections. “We won’t help out a dictatorship that only cares about maintaining power on the backs ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump ordered a ban on gun accessories known as “bump stocks” that allow semiautomatic rifles to be fired more rapidly, taking the administration’s first concrete measures in response to a Florida school shooting last week. Trump said that he had signed a memorandum directing the Justice Department to come up with rules prohibiting “all devices that turn ...